Police: Man Confesses to Oakland Post Editor's Murder

OAKLAND, Calif. – Police said Monday they believe they have the man who killed veteran journalist Chauncey Bailey behind bars and expect murder charges to be filed soon.

Oakland Police Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said the suspect, Devaughndre Broussard, a 19-year-old associate of the group that runs the Oakland-based Your Black Muslim Bakery, has confessed to fatally shooting the 57-year-old Oakland Post editor.

Jordan said Broussard apparently was upset about a story Bailey was working on involving the group's finances, although he would not go into details. He also said police don't believe Broussard acted alone, but investigators are still piecing together how the plan was developed.

Authorities said Broussard likely will be charged on Tuesday.

Charges are also expected against two other affiliates of the group, but they involve a kidnapping and robbery that took place in May in Oakland.

The three were among seven people arrested Friday, a day after Bailey's slaying, during law-enforcement raids at the bakery and three other locations. The business was subsequently shut down by county health inspectors because of unsanitary conditions discovered during the raid.

The raids on the bakery organization, founded nearly 40 years ago with a mission to empower Oakland's poor, capped off a yearlong investigation into an alleged series of violent crimes police said were connected to the group.

The group's 21-year-old chief executive officer, Yusuf Bey IV, son of the bakery's founder, was arrested on an outstanding assault warrant issued for an April 2006 incident in which he allegedly struck a bouncer with his BMW after being thrown out of a San Francisco strip club.

Bey also pleaded not guilty last year to charges he was the ringleader of a Black Muslim group caught by surveillance cameras in November 2005 smashing up two Oakland liquor stores for selling alcohol to the black community.

Bailey was a longtime reporter for the Oakland Tribune before becoming editor of the Post, a weekly newspaper geared toward the Bay Area black community, earlier this year.

Witnesses said he was ambushed Thursday morning as he walked to work in downtown Oakland. A man wearing a mask shot Bailey three times and then fled.

The brazenness of the attack shocked many, prompting calls for community mobilization against violence in the city.

"The public has every right to be upset because he was an innocent man trying to write a story to educate the public on the things that were happening in an organization that they have the right to know," Jordan said.